We hope to see you at our annual meeting and appreciation event, a 30-minute online event on Wednesday, March 24 from 5:30-6:00pm. We’ll celebrate you and your impact over the past year as TIHAN’s provided a record amount of services. Information about this is below, along with other news and opportunities: a tax credit, a chance to win a 2021 Ford Bronco, Matthew’s inspiring story, women and HIV, a return to volunteering, and more. Thank you for joining us as we build a community of support!
Scott Blades
Executive Director
Quick Links to This Month’s Articles
- Join Us for a 30-Minute Virtual Event Reflecting on What You Made Possible Over the Past Year! Our Online Annual Meeting is Wed, March 24 at 5:30pm
- Did You Know? There’s Still Time to Get an Arizona State Tax Credit on your 2020 Tax Return!
- Featured CarePackage Need of the Month: Hand Sanitizer
- One $25 Raffle Ticket Could Win You a New Ford Bronco Sport, Two 1st Class Airline Tickets Anywhere, or $5,000 Cash!
- You Are Essential! Are you Vaccinated and Ready to Consider Volunteering Again?
- Some Facts About Women and HIV
- Recruiting a Full-Time Job Opening at TIHAN
- TIHAN Welcomes Donations of Vehicles
- Join us for the April Volunteer Orientation
- Matthew: Looking Back, Looking Forward
- Mid-Town Drop Off Spot for Saturday Donations of Toiletry Items
Join Us for a 30-Minute Virtual Event Reflecting on What You Made Possible Over the Past Year! Our Online Annual Meeting is Wed, March 24 at 5:30pm
Please join us as we acknowledge and celebrate you and your impact in 2020. Our annual meeting goes virtual this year, reflecting on TIHAN’s dedicated volunteers and community business, faith & organizational partners, with some personal words from our CarePartners living with HIV.
Our event theme this year is “We’re All in This Together.” It’s free and open to all who want to know how, together, we made a difference during 2020.
Topic: TIHAN Annual Meeting and Celebration of Impact
Time: Mar 24, 2021 05:30 PM Arizona
Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID: 885 2263 0312
Passcode: 2021
Did You Know? There’s Still Time to Get an Arizona State Tax Credit on your 2020 Tax Return!
Did you know that as a donor to TIHAN, you can receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit against your Arizona state taxes— up to $400 per individual or $800 per married couple? This is not just a deduction, but a direct credit off any state taxes you owe.
And under Arizona law, if you made a contribution to TIHAN in 2020 or before April 15, 2021, you can still claim the tax credit on your 2020 tax return! So there’s still time to donate.
You don’t have to itemize, and you can claim this tax credit in addition to the school and foster care tax credits!
You can donate online now at www.tihan.org, then click on the DONATE MONEY button.
Featured CarePackage Need of the Month: Hand Sanitizer
One of the ways that we help our CarePartners live well with HIV is by providing not only essential household items, but also products to help keep them safe. One of the ways we do this is by supplying them with small or medium sized containers of hand sanitizer – even more important right now during the pandemic.
When CarePartners need to venture out for groceries or other errands, and especially when they must rely on public transportation, hand sanitizer is essential in minimizing the risk of virus. Please help us keep TIHAN CarePartners safe and healthy by donating any quantity of small or medium sized hand sanitizer that you can.
Donations can be dropped off outside the front door of the TIHAN office, Monday through Friday, 8:30AM to 4:30PM. Thank you for your generous support of TIHAN and our mission!
One $25 Raffle Ticket Could Win You a New Ford Bronco Sport, Two 1st Class Airline Tickets Anywhere, or $5,000 Cash!
The 2021 “Millions for Tucson” raffle will feature three amazing prizes!
The grand prize is a 2021 Ford Bronco Sport Badlands Edition; second prize is two roundtrip first-class airline tickets to anywhere in the world; and third prize is $5,000 cash.
Tickets are only $25 each, or 5 tickets for $100. Need not be present to win.
TIHAN gets to use the money from all the raffle tickets we sell to support our programs and services, and you get a chance to win these great prizes!
Tickets available now online here (https://tihan.ejoinme.org/win), or you can get them from the TIHAN office (520-299-6647).
The public drawing takes place in December, and you don’t have to be present to win. Your odds are much better than the lottery—no more than 100,000 tickets will be sold.
You Are Essential! Are you Vaccinated and Ready to Consider Volunteering Again?
As more of us are able to access vaccinations against COVID-19, some of us are feeling comfortable considering a return to volunteering in the community and making a difference. Almost everyone who’s helping in the TIHAN office has been able to be vaccinated, and the same is true for people helping with our Poz Café lunch program.
We’re still masking, sanitizing, and taking precautions, but we’re on our way to returning to some semblance of a post-pandemic normalcy, where we can give of our time and talents to make lives better for others.
If you are interested in returning to volunteering, contact Scott at 520-299-6647. (Although not all of our volunteer roles are resuming now, many are!)
Some Facts About Women and HIV
Of the estimated 1,173,900 people estimated to have HIV in the United States, 261,800 (22.3%) were women (2018 figures).
March 10 is designated as National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NWGHAAD), and we seek to raise awareness throughout the month of March about women and HIV.
A fact sheet from the US CDC lists several of the challenges that place women at higher risk for HIV:
- Racism, discrimination and stigma may affect whether some women seek or receive high-quality health services.
- Some women don’t know their male partner’s risk factors for HIV (such as injection drug use or having sex with men) and may not use a condom or medicine to prevent HIV.
- Women who have been exposed to intimate partner violence may be more likely to engage in risky behaviors or be forced to have sex without a condom or medicines to prevent or treat HIV.
- Because receptive sex is riskier than insertive sex, women are more likely to get HIV during vaginal or anal sex than their partner.
For this and more information about women and HIV, visit this article from Poz Magazine: National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
Recruiting a Full-Time Job Opening at TIHAN
TIHAN is recruiting a full-time Operations Manager.
This position requires office management background, computer skills, and volunteer coordination experience. More details about the position and minimum qualifications are available at https://tihan.org/about-tihan/#jobopenings.
Qualified applicants should download the employment application, and submit the completed application along with a cover letter and resume to scott@tihan.org. Please share with qualified applicants.
TIHAN Welcomes Donations of Vehicles
Donating a vehicle isn’t complicated or costly—it’s free and TIHAN makes it easy!
Call Scott at 520-299-6647 ext 202 or fill out the online form at Donate Your Car To TIHAN and a donor representative will contact you to support you through the simple process and arrangement for pickup—even if it’s not running!
You get the tax deduction, and people with HIV get more support services!
Join us for the April Volunteer Orientation
Would you like to get involved and be part of making a difference in someone’s live, and in our community, safely? The needs for volunteers in some area are high, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Sign up for an online Volunteer Orientation. The next one is Tuesday, April 20, from 2:00-4:30pm.
We’re recruiting volunteers for a variety of important roles:
- Link Specialist volunteer(connecting people with support services)
- Operations Assistant(front desk receptionist)
- Marketing Committee volunteer
- Program Committee volunteer (program management and evaluation)
- CarePartner Program Support volunteer
- Social Media volunteer
You can also find the complete list of our current volunteer openings by going to TIHAN Volunteer Opportunities on VolunteerMatch.com. One of these roles might be just right for you!
You can also call or email us at 520-299-6647 or VolunteerCoordinator@tihan.org
Matthew: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Matthew has been living with HIV for almost 40 years. But he doesn’t call himself a longtime survivor. “The amount of time isn’t as relevant as the fact that I am a survivor,” he says. He got sick in 1982, when he was 28, living in Sacramento and working at a hospital. By 1983, his doctors presumed he had AIDS–there was still no test in existence, but he had the tell-tale symptoms. In 1985 when the HIV test became available, it was confirmed. Matthew’s doctor told him he had HIV and likely would be dead within 6-12 months. That doctor–who was also Matthew’s friend and neighbor–died from AIDS, as did his partner. Matthew survived both of them.
Matthew’s parents were extremely supportive of him, something that was all too uncommon in the 1980s. “In 1986, they even went to the Gay Games to watch me compete in volleyball,” he remembers. “I remember having them over to dinner with a group of friends, all gay men, and they fit in perfectly.”
In 1989, Matthew went on disability. In 1991, he moved back to his hometown of Quincy in northern California. “I had every expectation of dying soon, and that lasted into the mid- to late 1990s,” he recalls, when effective HIV medications started to be developed. That’s when hope started to enter his mind. “The hopelessness and helplessness of the early years of AIDS slowly dissolved into a sense of hope. Instead of worrying and thinking about my death, I started focusing outside of myself and reaching out and helping others, whether in support groups or hospice, taking care of people with AIDS.”
He also got involved with a local group in his small town of Quincy, near Reno. It was a local consortium of people and groups making decisions about where to spend the limited funding devoted for people with AIDS. He also started speaking about living with AIDS through a speaker’s bureau called Positively Speaking. He soon met the love of his life, Forrest, with whom he’s now been together 27 years. “Forrest was running a group called Frontline of Northern Nevada,” Matthew reminisces, “and we went into schools, prisons, drug rehab facilities–sharing our experiences, educating people.”
Matthew soon got involved in AIDS activism at the state level as he joined the California AIDS Working Group, where he represented the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS living in rural areas of the state, making sure their voices were heard as decisions were being made affecting their lives. One of the most impactful experiences of his life was being part of the “Jiminy Cricket Caucus” of the group. “That caucus became the conscience of the larger group, reminding people about why we formed and keeping the focus on the people we served,” he recalls.
Matthew was placed in a position to speak to large groups of decision makers, doctors and administrators. “The responses I receive were extremely positive,” he says. “I got to meet a great diversity of people from all backgrounds, from a 20-something year old AIDS activist to service providers and state administrators.” One of his greatest accomplishments was to be a part of and watch the development of a roving HIV clinic throughout the five rural counties in Northern California. “Finally, we didn’t have to make a 300-mile roundtrip to Sacramento to see an AIDS specialist,” he remembers.
In 2005, Matthew and Forrest moved to Vail, Arizona, where they had friends. Matthew tried to get involved with local groups, but developed valley fever, which can be common among people with compromised immune systems. He got very sick and had a long recovery, and lost the energy of being an activist. “I was kind of left to drift, I guess. I felt I was going to be ok.” Over the following years, Matthew became addicted to medications he was prescribed to deal with pain and anxiety. When he was finally ready to deal with his addiction and the underlying PTSD that had contributed to it, he turned to a support group of people living with HIV at El Rio, along with therapy.
CODAC, an organization providing support to people with substance use issues, had a writing group for people dealing with trauma, and Matthew found incredible healing and support through writing and the group process. “I had found a direction in life–again. Life is not a straight line, you know,” he says as he laughs. “After dealing with a lot of my PTSD, I decided writing was what I could do. When I stopped using substances, I got clarity of mind. Without the drugs, I find I can choose my words more wisely and present a better picture of whatever story I am trying tell. Writing about the trauma I experienced was part of the healing process for me.” Matthew and the other members of group, which now meets by teleconference, write about trauma, as well as other life experiences. In 2019, Matthew self-published a memoir, and is now writing his second book, a work of fiction about trauma and suicide among young people.
Relationships and connections with friends are very important to Matthew. It’s the focus of his poem “They Said,” which is included below. The connections he makes through the HIV support group and his writing group help him grow. And making connections is one of the reasons he loves TIHAN’s Poz Café lunch program. “It’s been an important part of my socialization, the people I see and meet at Poz Café,” he reflects. “It one of the few ways I meet new people.”
Matthew speaks of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the related losses has affected him. His almost 40 years of living with HIV has been filled with losses. “The losses I’ve experienced are always on my mind. So many losses. The person who started the Gay Games to show that there was more to us than what the public perceived. My doctors. My friends. People that I took care of. People who took care of me. People who got worn down by their use of medications or street drugs. I think of all those people, often. I have a monument of a sort,” he shares, “on our property, down in the arroyo. Over the past year, when I lose someone, whether it’s from HIV or COVID, I go down there and place a rock on this monument to remember them. I know that, when a monsoon comes, this monument to them will be washed away, and I will have to start it, again. It’s washed away once already, and I know it will wash away again….”
Matthew describes himself as a person of hope. “Hope has always been a part of me,” he reflects. “I want to instill in others a sense of hope, that life–although changed–will return again to ‘a normal.’ And that’s true for COVID and also for HIV. I think my sense of hope comes from seeing people who are committed to making change. Science and the understanding of a virus improves over time, and scientists are giving their best thoughts on how to improve the future.”
“Today, I can look at the commitment to ending HIV from people like Dr. Fauci, and I know that there will come a time when we will live in a world without HIV,” he shares. “One day I, and we, the rest of the world, will live without HIV.” There will be a cure and vaccine for HIV, he believes. And it will happen during his lifetime.
“I believe in love,” Matthew states, “and I know that love can move me, you, us, to a better place.”
They Said
by Matthew Cokor
I sat at a table for six
Conversation was sparse to begin
Introductions were made
John, David, Doug, Bruce and George
Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, Tucson
All the facts fixed
I asked a question
How are you connected?
Friends and partners
They said
To partners David and John
How long have you been together?
2 years
They said
To David and John
How long have you lived together?
6 months
They said
To David and John
When is your anniversary?
November 23 said John, November 24 said David
They exchanged a knowing look
The rest unsaid
To David and John
Who cooks the best?
We’re equal
They said
To David and John
Are you to marry?
Again a knowing glance
Talk of friends thinking
Much more was said
Bruce, Doug and George contributed
Housing, Dreams, Dogs and Cats
They said
A meal I wished would never end
With all that was said
Emblazoned in my mind
The stories to be retold
The verbal history of gay men
So they will say
A spark
From old to young, young to old
A sense of the past
To the faith in the future
So they will say
Mid-Town Drop Off Spot for Saturday Donations of Toiletry Items
Have some toiletry items to donate for CarePackages for people living with HIV and prefer a place to safely drop them off on a Saturday?
Our partners at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church are hosting a donation drive-by drop-off in their parking lot on the remaining Saturdays in March (March 20 and 27), from 10:00am-11:00am.
We’re especially seeking toilet paper (2-ply), paper towels, deodorant, shampoo, and hand sanitizer, but also collecting donations of soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes (individually packaged), razors, dish soap, lotion, and cleaning products as well.
Bring one item or do a little shopping trip and load up with multiple items for our CarePartners living with HIV. These are items that they cannot purchase using SNAP benefits (food stamps), and since most of our CarePartners have very low income, these items are a great help.
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church is the church with the iconic domed steeple on the east side of Campbell Avenue, two blocks north of Speedway. The street address is 1200 N Campbell, and the drive-by drop-off location will be in the parking lot right off of 20 Mabel as soon as you turn off Campbell.
